Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote:Anthony R. Stancl, 18, posing as a female on Facebook, persuaded at least 31 boys to send him naked pictures and then blackmailed some of the boys into performing sex acts under the threat that the pictures would be released to the rest of the high school, authorities say.

This is some fucked up shit here. I'm not really sure what to say besides that some people are idiots and some people are terrible.

If this guy gets convicted he'll get over 300 years in prison. He deserves every one of them.

Spoiler:

hyperion wrote:

Hawknc wrote:Crap, that image is going to get a lot of use around here.

It is a dick move, but if you don't want nude pictures of yourself on the internet, don't take nude pictures of yourself and send them to people. This is their own damn fault. Especially if you've never met the person. Especially considering that people who'd be willing to engage in sex acts they don't want to do to cover it up are people who are especially concerned about their nudity.

Actually, I think the first post might have won that race with "some people are idiots", although I guess it's a bit ambiguous as to whether it refers to the sending of pictures or to the bomb threat. On the other hand, the posts condemning the alleged blackmailer/rapist have a rather concerning guilty-until-proven-innocent feel to them.

Actually, I think the first post might have won that race with "some people are idiots", although I guess it's a bit ambiguous as to whether it refers to the sending of pictures or to the bomb threat. On the other hand, the posts condemning the alleged blackmailer/rapist have a rather concerning guilty-until-proven-innocent feel to them.

The article wrote:More than 300 naked photos and movie clips of New Berlin boys and another 600 professionally made pornographic movies involving children were found on the computer, Schimel said. The computer contained 39 folders that were labeled using the boys' names or their screen names. The folders held pictures and movie clips of the boys.

Elennaro wrote:Actually, that's a bit of a problem for me personally. You see, I fully agree that rape victims deserve sympathy, and that the worst thing you could do is not believing them. However, I also believe that the presumption of innocence should not be restricted to the legal system - we all have a moral obligation to believe people are innocence until proven guilty, IMHO, because if we don't, then innocent people will just be serving a sentence in society, rather than in jail. So, if someone were to confide in me that they were raped by a very specific person (by which I mean that I know who) something of a moral dilemma would arise here, as I can't take an action that doesn't betray at least one of my principles.

If you are moving the innocent until proven guilty thing into society, you also need to move the proof of guilt into society. You can't say, "Society shouldn't accuse someone of being guilty until they are legally proved guilty". You don't need to wait until someone is convicted for them to be proven guilty.

For example, if you see person A shoot person B in the head and kill them, even though legally, A cannot be punished until after they are proven guilty, do you really need to wait until the end of the trial to say A is guilty?

Hippo: roc is the good little communist that lurks in us allRichard Stallman: Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.suffer-cait: roc's a pretty cool dude

Explain to me how being forcibly pressured into sex is ever the victim's fault. And please, use small words. I might get lost, otherwise.

Pa-Patch wrote:Especially considering that people who'd be willing to engage in sex acts they don't want to do to cover it up are people who are especially concerned about their nudity.

Did you ever actually attend high-school? Are you aware of just how much pressure a student's peers can exert?

I was there a year ago, to be quite honest. I wouldn't have let myself be abused to keep naked photos of myself secret. I wouldn't have given anyone nude photos of myself to begin with.

I'm also not defending it, guys, don't interpret a little bit of glibness as supporting this. Thinking that they shouldn't have let themselves be put in that position does not mean I'm okay with the people who take advantage. The guy responsible should be punished, and it's quite bad that 12 year olds were involved and a 15 year-old was abused. I still think they should have known better, especially the 18-19 year olds.

Editing in an analogy: Say someone gets themselves conned out of money. It's possible to think they acted foolishly and feel bad for them and disapprove of whoever conned them.

Pet peeve......STOP saying "gay sex". In the title, it is of little relevance. In the OP, the fact that a male is revealed to be blackmailing them should hint that we're dealing with a predatory gay man. To say that some boys are being forced to have "gay sex" by a man is redundant.

"Gay Sex" frustrates the shit out of me.

Belial wrote:That's charming, Nancy, but all I hear when you talk is a bunch of yippy dog sounds.

Pa-Patch wrote:I'm also not defending it, guys, don't interpret a little bit of glibness as supporting this. Thinking that they shouldn't have let themselves be put in that position does not mean I'm okay with the people who take advantage. The guy responsible should be punished, and it's quite bad that 12 year olds were involved and a 15 year-old was abused. I still think they should have known better, especially the 18-19 year olds.

Editing in an analogy: Say someone gets themselves conned out of money. It's possible to think they acted foolishly and feel bad for them and disapprove of whoever conned them.

I agree. I also don't think that Solt's post was necessarily victim-blaming, on these same grounds. You can warn someone about walking down dark alleys alone without thinking that it's their fault if they get killed doing it.

Pa-Patch wrote:Editing in an analogy: Say someone gets themselves conned out of money. It's possible to think they acted foolishly and feel bad for them and disapprove of whoever conned them.

Okay. Do you understand how this sentiment is different from the following?

Pa-Patch wrote:This is their own damn fault.

Regardless of high-risk actions, a person never 'deserves' what they get. I don't care if a black guy walks into the middle of a Klu Klux Klan sponsored gun show convention with "KILL WHITEY" written on his shirt while waving two burning confederate flags and screaming 'JEFF FOXWORTHY JOKES SUCK!'; he bares no blame at all for whatever harm befalls him. High risk behavior in no way impacts the dynamics of responsibility between the perpetrators and the victims. It's irrelevant for the purposes of determining blame and punishment.

Scratch out my inappropriate damn and they're not that different. There's a difference between saying someone is at fault and someone deserves something, or that whoever takes advantage is blameless.I'm not saying that their actions should have anything to do with how much the perpetrator is punished. We're on the same page there, if you misunderstood me. I'm just saying that what the victims did was high risk behavior and was foolish. I'd go as far as to say that if you engage in risky business what happens is, at least in part, your fault, but then we're getting into some philosophical debate that has to do with a lot more than this article and probably has it's own thread in SB. I'm not using "fault" in a sense of legality or anything, just in terms of thinking of their behavior.

2. Responsibility for a mistake or an offense; culpability. See Synonyms at blame.

Hippo: roc is the good little communist that lurks in us allRichard Stallman: Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.suffer-cait: roc's a pretty cool dude

Pa-Patch wrote:I'd go as far as to say that if you engage in risky business what happens is, at least in part, your fault, but then we're getting into some philosophical debate that has to do with a lot more than this article and probably has it's own thread in SB.

This sentiment will lead you to places that you would probably rather not go.

I would say that it is not a good idea to divvy up responsibility for other people's actions on the basis of how much you were 'asking for it'. Far better to simply point out that the reason that high risk actions are high risk is because the perpetrators have defined them as such. In essence, you're giving the 'bad guys' a stake in determining who gets blamed. "Because I hit people who say 'Snerk', you have some shared responsibility to not say 'Snerk' around me. If you say 'Snerk' around me, well, maybe I'm to blame, but so are you."

No. That's stupid.

Last edited by The Great Hippo on Tue Feb 10, 2009 2:58 am UTC, edited 2 times in total.

Hippo: roc is the good little communist that lurks in us allRichard Stallman: Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.suffer-cait: roc's a pretty cool dude

Well, in the future I'll just say mistake when I mean mistake and responsibility when I mean responsibility, to leave out ambiguity. I probably should have bit a bit more careful with my choice of words, but at this point what I meant is pretty clearly explained and we're just talking semantics.

To use your example, I'm not saying that we shouldn't feel bad for people who say 'Snerk' and get hit, or give any less punishment to people who punch people punch people with that supposed "justification".I'm just saying that people who DO around around those people saying 'Snerk' and don't want to get punched might not be acting intelligently.

Bakemaster wrote:This is most depressing not because some high school guys were blackmailed into rape, but because of what the right-wing pundits will do with it.

I kind of what to preemptively firebomb their radio stations.

I'm... slow. I'm not connecting the dots here. Are you thinking internet censorship of some sort?

Teenager forces others into gay sex. This is obviously proof that all those dirty homosexuals are all evil and shouldn't have any rights. Hey, don't yell at me for being bigoted, I just tell it like it is and keep it fair and balanced.

Hippo: roc is the good little communist that lurks in us allRichard Stallman: Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.suffer-cait: roc's a pretty cool dude

Rape is not going to stop when people don't send naked pictures when "they should know better" or go for walks at night when "they should know better" or wear short skirts when "they should know better." Rape, an intrinsically violent attack on the agency of those that you now charge with avoiding it, will continue as long as rapists are afforded a social environment conducive to rape. That environment grows stronger when rape victims who come forward are shamed for "allowing" themselves to be raped, and when blame for a morally atrocious act on the part of the rapist is declined in favor of blame for a minor lapse in judgment on the part of the victim.

Am I honestly having to fucking explain why victims are not responsible for the fact that other people choose to target them?

Pa-Patch wrote:I'd go as far as to say that if you engage in risky business what happens is, at least in part, your fault, but then we're getting into some philosophical debate that has to do with a lot more than this article and probably has it's own thread in SB.

Emphasis mine.

This is what I was responding to. If you did not mean to say that victims who engage in high risk behavior share some fault for their own victimization, then--in the future--you might want to refrain from saying precisely that.

Aikanaro wrote:....I think that Pa-Patch's point can be summed up as follows: Sending out naked pictures of yourself on the internet is a bad idea. Don't do it. Also; Rape is bad. Don't do it.

Let's see:

Pa-Patch wrote:[Committing motherfucking rape] is a dick move, but … this is their own damn fault.

Pa-Patch wrote:I still think they should have known better, especially the 18-19 year olds.

Pa-Patch wrote:I'd go as far as to say that if you engage in risky business what happens is, at least in part, your fault

Notice how the focus of criticism immediately shifts to the students who were raped (through the acts of another person, sophistries about "responsibility" aside). The sex was rape precisely because the victims were not willing participants, but Pa-Patch's central idea here has been to assign blame to the victims for an act to which they did not consent. I believe that my two examples of ways in which rape culture is perpetuated are still applicable.

Lastly, quoting for truth because this cuts right to the heart of what I was trying to say before:

The Great Hippo wrote:Far better to simply point out that the reason that high risk actions are high risk is because the perpetrators have defined them as such. In essence, you're giving the 'bad guys' a stake in determining who gets blamed.

Fair enough, save for one thing: Some things are bad ideas because perpetrators have, as Hippo said, MADE them defined as bad ideas. Other ideas are kinda intrinsically bad, and the possibility of someone preying on your misstep are simply one more added danger. For example, if someone goes into a dark alley and gets mugged, yes, the "fault" lies with the mugger, not the victim. However, even independent of the possibility of someone ab/using any data you send out, sending out naked pictures of yourself online is just plain intrinsically a bad idea, due to all the bad things that can happen, even ruling out the ill will of fellow human beings.

Dear xkcd,

On behalf of my religion, I'm sorry so many of us do dumb shit. Please forgive us.

Aikanaro wrote:Fair enough, save for one thing: Some things are bad ideas because perpetrators have, as Hippo said, MADE them defined as bad ideas. Other ideas are kinda intrinsically bad, and the possibility of someone preying on your misstep are simply one more added danger. For example, if someone goes into a dark alley and gets mugged, yes, the "fault" lies with the mugger, not the victim. However, even independent of the possibility of someone ab/using any data you send out, sending out naked pictures of yourself online is just plain intrinsically a bad idea, due to all the bad things that can happen, even ruling out the ill will of fellow human beings.

I'm curious as to what negative effects sharing naked pictures in private can have outside of the ill will of other human beings.

There's risk in every activity. If I walk across the street, there's a risk I'll be hit by a car. If I skinny dip in my backyard pool, there's a chance that someone'll look over my fence, take pictures of me in the nude, and post them on the internet. There's a chance that someone I invite to go swimming with me in my backyard because they convinced my they are my friend will take pictures of me naked, and blackmail me if I don't do what they want.

If this happens, how is it my fault?

Hippo: roc is the good little communist that lurks in us allRichard Stallman: Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.suffer-cait: roc's a pretty cool dude